Sunday, 26 June 2011

Well... baking a banana cake seemed like pretty good idea. I got my inspiration from a BBC Goodfood website recipe, but I adapted it to my taste and expectations. The original recipe called for chocolate chips, sugar and a chocolate sour cream frosting. I wanted to keep it light so this is what I came up with :

Ingredients for a normal plum cake tray:

120 g white flour

55g whole grain flour

100 g brown sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

3 eggs, two of them separated * yolks and whites

2 large very ripe bananas * when they have the black dots on them, they are perfect for banana cake

100 ml sunflower oil

50 ml milk

vanilla extract

rum extract

for the icing:

4 tablespoons of powdered brown sugar ( you can make it yourself with the help of an immersion blender )

1 tablespoon of instant coffee

2 tablespoons of milk

How to prepare it :

1. Heat the oven to 160 C. Line a loaf tin with parchment paper.

2. Mix the flours, cocoa, sugar and baking powder.

3. In another bowl mix the pureed bananas with one egg, two egg yolks, oil, vanilla and rum extract and milk.

4. Beat the two remaining egg whites until they form soft peaks.

5. Slowly fold in the dry ingredients into the banana egg mix. Even slower, fold in the beaten egg whites, taking care of not to overwork the batter. You want to trap inside the batter as much air bubbles as you can.

6. Everything goes is in the tray and the tray in the oven for 1 hour and 10 minutes or just until a wooden skewer comes out dry from the middle of the cake.

7. While the cake is cooling down on a rack, prepare the icing. Mix all the ingredients, adding more powdered sugar if necessary until you form a paste. Drizzle it over the cake and wait for another 10 minutes for the icing to get stiff.